Why Are There No Women In Tolkien's World?

[spiffynamehere]

It has, at this point, become a bit obvious to point out the lack of female characters in children’s entertainment: the Pixar movies, the morning cartoon shows, even the Legos that they play with - unless, of course, the product in question was designed specifically for girls, which raises another set of issues about self-reinforcing stereotypes.

Comments

[theditor]

I'm a feminist and a Tolkien fan, and although I can completely understand being turned off by the lack of women in the movies, there are, in fact, many strong female characters in his world. Not as many as there could be, of course, but there are named women of all of the major races: men, elves, dwarves and hobbits. He even created female talking TREES! There are many critiques to be made of both the books and movies, but I don't think it's quite fair to go so far to say "Tolkien seems to have wiped women off the face of Middle-earth."

[spiffynamehere]

Named /= significant character. In the movies, there's really only Eowyn, Arwen, and Galadriel. The only other one I can think of offhand is Goldberry.

[theditor]

That's why I can understand being turned off by the movies. I'm not claiming he's an expert on female characters, but "The Hobbit" and "LOTR" barely scratch the surface of everything he wrote about Middle-earth.

[clafount]

Uh, there may be female talking trees but they don't appear as individual characters (the kind who actually speak) in the books

[theditor]

As I said above, I'm not claiming he's an expert on female characters, but I also don't think it's fair to say he wiped women off the face of Middle-earth. Last night I named two dozen off the top of my head. No, that's not enough, and no, most of them don't play huge roles in the mythology, but some do, and IMO several (Indis, Nerdanel, Elwing, Luthien, Galadriel, Arwen, Eowyn) have quite a bit of agency.

[keeni84]

What do you mean by "agency?"

[spiffynamehere]

IIRC, in this context it more or less means control over their own life.

[clafount]

I feel like focusing on the fact that he included women in the (unpublished, until after his death) Silmarillon excuses the fact that he intentionally wrote and published four novels with hardly any female characters.

It's a glaring omission from his most popular and well known works.

[pleasure_past]

Tolkien literally wiped a race of female talking trees off the face of Middle Earth.

And the dwarf race is 2/3rds male, too. Because what the fuck does any race need women for?

[theditor]

In addition to sexism/misogyny, we can also make the case that racism makes Tolkien's work unpalatable. I acknowledge his world is problematic, but I still enjoy it. I can understand why the original author and many other people don't.

[pleasure_past]

we can also make the case that racism makes Tolkien's work unpalatable

That case has been made like a zillion times because it's true.

I don't think anyone here is saying that you have to put your feminist card through the shredder right now if you like Tolkien. In fact,you're very far from the only Tolkien fan here. The fact of the matter, though, is that "Tolkien seems to have wiped women off the face of middle earth," is a hyperbole, but it isn't really unfair, baring in mind that it was always meant to be hyperbolic. Tolkien went well out of his way and killed off entire races of women to avoid having to write women.

[clafount]

You put this better than I have. That's exactly it. The phrase might be hyperbole...but it's warranted, imo.